MUST READ–People of the Book Why do Mormons Love Israel?

BY OREN KESSLER

foreignpolicy.com

Mitt Romney dropped by the Western Wall on Sunday, July 29, but one nearby landmark was conspicuously left off his Israel itinerary: the Jerusalem Center of Brigham Young University (BYU) — or as locals call it with typical directness, “Mormon University.”

The presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee, in his campaign and throughout his political career, has sought to downplay the significance of his Mormon faith. But though his religion could be a liability for many U.S. evangelicals and other devout Christians (just half of Americans believe Mormons are Christian), it may yet prove a blessing in winning over another high-value constituency: Among all American faith groups, Mormons receive the highest favorability rating from Jews.

“Mormons consider themselves to be latter-day Israelites and inheritors of the promises made to Abraham, so they have a natural affinity for Jews,” says Mark Paredes, a Mormon from Michigan who writes the blog Jews and Mormons for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

“Because they’re a small community of outsiders, they’ve generally allied themselves with Jews,” adds Jonny Daniels, a Jerusalem-based Republican strategist well-connected in Mormon circles through his friendship with Glenn Beck. “They can relate to us in a way other Christians can’t.”

To outsiders, the Book of Mormon can seem a radically revisionist text that has the Garden of Eden situated in Missouri and Jesus bringing the Gospel to Native Americans after his resurrection. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS for short) portrays itself as a “restorationist” creed which, through the agency of Joseph Smith, returns Christianity to its authentic roots, unsullied by Greek philosophy and other profane accretions.

Many of those roots are unambiguously Jewish, even if most Jews don’t know it. The Book of Mormon depicts Native Americans as Hebrews exiled from the Land of Israel around 600 B.C., and Mormons self-identify as descendants of the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Menashe. The LDS church has its own version of the Aaronic priesthood (the cohanim who once performed rites in the Jewish Temple), and the iconic Salt Lake Temple houses an inner sanctuary into which only a high priest may enter — a direct analog to the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.

An LDS holy text called the Word of Wisdom includes dietary restrictions — tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine are verboten — that Mormons view as comparable to the rules for kosher food. On the Mormon Sabbath, believers (or as they’re often known, the House of Israel) are encouraged to spend time in study and avoid exchanging money. Mormons even refer to nonmembers as gentiles — Utah only got its first “gentile” governor in 1917: Simon Bamberger, a Jew.

The Book of Mormon even has Jesus presciently condemning anti-Semitism and “replacement theology” — the Christian doctrine that the divine covenant with the Jews was superseded when they rejected him as Messiah. “Yea, and ye need not any longer hiss, nor spurn, nor make game of the Jews, nor any of the remnant of the house of Israel,” the Nazarene tells the Indian-Israelites of America, “[F]or behold, the Lord remembereth his covenant unto them, and he will do unto them according to that which he hath sworn.”

“There are no people in the world who understand the Jews like the Mormons,” Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once told future LDS President Ezra Taft Benson. “We need to know more about the Jews, and the Jews ought to know more about the Mormons,” Benson replied.

Mormon leaders espoused Zionist sympathies decades before the Jewish national movement was born. In 1841, Joseph Smith sent his “personal apostle” Orson Hyde to Jerusalem, where on the Mount of Olives he beseeched God to “restore the kingdom unto Israel — raise up Jerusalem as its capital, and continue her people a distinct nation and government.” Today, Jerusalem’s very own Orson Hyde Park sits on the spot of that prophecy, just a few steps from BYU’s Jerusalem Center.

Yet Mormon-Jewish relations have at times been uneasy. In the 1980s, as BYU laid the groundwork for its Jerusalem campus, ultra-Orthodox groups in Israel held a 7,000-strong pray-in at the Western Wall, warning of the “spiritual holocaust” that would result from LDS proselytizing. (The Utah-based university is owned and operated by the LDS church, which expects male members to spend two years in missionary work.)

Ultimately a deal was struck between church and state — Mormon and Jewish, respectively — barring students from proselytizing in Israel, a stricture that exists in certain Muslim countries and was once in place in the Soviet Union. The campus opened in 1987, admitting some 170 BYU students for semester-long instruction in the Old and New testaments, Arab and Islamic civilizations, and the region’s history and languages (students can choose Hebrew or Arabic).

The ban on proselytizing has been scrupulously upheld, but the BYU campus’s very location is itself sensitive. Perched on Mount Scopus (an enclave in East Jerusalem controlled by Israel before it unified the city in the 1967 Six-Day War), it overlooks the Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock.

“We’re situated on Jerusalem’s seam-line, and politically we’re also neutral,” says the center’s executive director, Eran Hayet, who is Israeli (and Jewish). “We teach our students to be listeners — that you don’t have to be anti-Palestinian to be pro-Israeli, and vice versa.”

The proselytizing question largely settled, LDS-Jewish relations suffered further strain in 1995 when Jewish groups discovered Mormons had posthumously converted at least 380,000 Holocaust survivors in what the LDS church calls “vicarious baptism.” The ensuing outrage led the church to ban the baptism of deceased Jews outright, but in several cases since, enterprising Mormons have taken it upon themselves to perform the rite.

“The church is very clear: Members are not allowed to engage in baptism of the dead for Jews, except for those who might be direct ancestors in their own line,” says James Kearl, the Utah-based assistant to the university president for the Jerusalem Center. “Nevertheless, there may have been two or three flare-ups over this by people who, frankly, were behaving mischievously.”

This February, an ex-LDS whistle-blower revealed that a church in the Dominican Republic had baptized Anne Frank and that a congregation in Idaho had done the same for Daniel Pearl, the Jewish American reporter kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan in 2002. That same month, after learning he had been preapproved for baptism, the author and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel pleaded with Romney to knock his own church into order.

And still the bond continues. Many Mormon leaders “are so pro-Jewish that it’s almost awkward,” wrote Stephen Richer, a Jewish pollster from Utah, in a recent op-ed for Salt Lake City’s leading daily. Utah’s Republican senator, Orrin Hatch, wears a mezuzah around his neck and once told the New York Times he often feels “sorry” he wasn’t born a Jew. “Mormons believe the Jewish people are the chosen people, just like the Old Testament says,” he said. “Anything I can do for the Jewish people, I will do.”

Romney’s supportive rhetoric on Israel — so unfaltering it could have been scripted by the Republican Jewish Coalition — suggest the candidate may be cut from the same white cloth.

At a presidential debate in January, he blamed the failure of Middle East peace talks squarely on the Palestinians: “The Israelis would be happy to have a two-state solution. It’s the Palestinians who don’t want a two-state solution. They want to eliminate the state of Israel.”

In Israel on Sunday, Romney delivered the same unflagging message of support. He pointedly referred to Jerusalem as the country’s capital, an implicit swipe at Barack Obama’s administration, which drew the ire of conservative commentators when in a routine news release in March it listed Jerusalem and Israel as separate places. Asked to clarify, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to name Jerusalem — or any other city — as the country’s capital. “Jerusalem is a permanent-status issue” between Israel and the Palestinians, she said. “It’s got to be resolved through negotiations.”

But Romney wasn’t inclined to allow even a ray of daylight between the two nations. “The story of how America … rose up to become the dear friend of the people of Israel is among the finest and most hopeful in our nation’s history,” Romney said against the backdrop of Mount Zion and the Old City walls. “Israel’s achievements are a wonder of the modern world … [and] America’s support of Israel should make every American proud.”

At a fundraiser on Monday, Romney hinted that Israel’s economic success may be a reflection of divine favor. “[As] I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” he said, citing Israelis’ innovation, a Jewish tradition of succeeding despite persecution, and the “hand of providence.”

Palestinians were unimpressed. “What is this man doing here?” said veteran negotiator Saeb Erekat. “Yesterday, he destroyed negotiations by saying Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and today he is saying Israeli culture is more advanced than Palestinian culture. Isn’t this racism?” Even some Israeli commentators felt the speech disingenuous, a gesture more at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than at Israelis themselves.

Paredes, the Mormon blogger, attributes the LDS-Jewish alliance to a history of shared suffering: “[T]he nearly 14 million members of our church, which has been the most persecuted major religion in American history … do have special feelings for the 13 million members of the most persecuted religion in world history.”

Daniels, the Republican strategist, is skeptical, however. “They’ve had a tough time; they’ve had their massacres. But in terms of persecution, you can’t really beat us. There’s little comparison between what we’ve been through in 2,000 years and what they’ve been through in 200,” he says.

“What we’ve experienced as a people is unmatched, nor would we wish it upon anyone.” “There is no existential threat against Utah,” he says. “As persecuted and troubled as they think they are, it ain’t that bad.”

I have personally studied with the Mormons and do not consider them a Christian religion. They had me read, “The Book of Mormon” and told me it was equal to the Holy Bible. There is no scientific literature to support this as fact! Furthermore, I’m not interested in becoming a goddess or a saint. I simply want to be a person and a foot step follower of Christ. Incidentally, there are many Christians who feel the same way.

Mormonism and Judaism; the two most-wacky religions. Then Scientology. Everyone should read what Christopher Hitchins wrote about Mormonism. You can’t imagine the absurdity of Mormon belief if you didn’t know….If the Zionists want Mort as president, he’ll be the next president.

Something about Obama will surface. His gay lover was murdered and it was never solved; something like that. Supposedly Obama had a gay past….

I suppose I thought the Mormons were a harmless, quirky religion that stressed preparedness & passed out free bibles. But I see they are more than just an eccentric group of missionaries out to convert the world.

It was only recently that they accepted USans of African descent.

Elie Weisel, by objecting to being baptised post mortem, actually concedes that the Rite of Baptism, a sprinkle of water and a few ‘magic’ words, has unrivaled power of the Divine Spirit.

Believe it or not, this story is very much related to 9-11 truth And certainly is an interesting facet of the upcoming presidential election.

My theory regarding 9-11 truth is that the perpetrators of 9-11 planned far in advance and very carefully for every part of 9-11, most especially during the after the event cover-up and diversionary scemes. They knew there would be 9-11 truth seekers and groups would form. They knew they had to get a chokehold on all truth seeking early on. They accomplished that with Mormon Dr. Steven Jones and his “hard science” “explosive nanothermite theory.” Dr. Steven Jones was supposedly fired for his truth seeking from BYU but that was a fake firing. Dr. Jones said on a radio show how generous his retirement package was and how he was able to use the proceeds to make several promising real estate investments. Dr. Jones has a history of subvervise games for our government, including subverting the “cold fusion” theory of Pons and Fleishman. He must have been regarded as having performed that job well and as being not only accepted as a renowned physicist but also as an acceptably good actor. (Heck, if the red/grey explosive nanothermite chips were in truth actually found around Ground Zero, who knows, the planners of 9-11 may have planned that those little red-grey chips be part of what was found in the almost nonexistent rubble for the Twin Towers.) Chemical Engineer and Dr. Fetzer have proven that nanothermite is no way, no how explosive, unless like toothpaste, when you put it with a strong explosive element, it becomes “highly explosive.” My “thermite gang” theory has many other features that support it, but that gang has had a mysterious chokehold to suppress all other good efforts to find 9-11 truth other than the orthodoxy of nanothermite.

I was in my mind kicked off the VeteransToday.com 9-11 truth section when they refused to post my comment on Craig McKee’s ( http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/) article about Dr. Kevin Barret… Shows I was gettin way too close to the target.

So my suggesting a connection between Mormon Dr. Steven Jones, Dr. Jones’ nanothermite therory, and the suversion of all 9-11 truth seeking was not acceptable free speech on that forum. Maybe it will not be on this forum too.

Another funny thing about Romney’s worshipping over in Israel now at the Wailing Wall is that the main part of the Christian right’s vote in the USA will come from hard core dispensationalists who were fed their allegiance to Israel and their twisted bible interpretations from Darby and the conman Cyrus Scofield, financilly sponsored and promoted in the USA by hard core Zionist Samuel Untermeyer. The Baptists are strongly Masonic. These dispensationalists will all of a sudden drop their ostensible “Christian conservative ” postions on abortion and pornography in favor of Mormon/Freemasonic/Judaic Israel First ism. 99 percent of Catholics will vote for Romney too as that faction of Catholism has been thorougly infiltrated of those of the Jewish Revolutionary Spirt.

Mormonism is not only joined at the hip with Israel and the religion of Judaism, Mormonism is also a religion founded upon Freemasonry, as was the USA and the modern nation state of Israel. Masonry, according to Dr. E. Michael Jones, is closely related to from its beginnings, to a fellow named Dee and those of the Jewish revolutionary spirit.

Mormonism is not only joined at the hip with Israel and the religion of Judaism, Mormonism is also a religion founded upon Freemasonry, as was the USA and the modern nation state of Israel. Masonry, according to Dr. E. Michael Jones, is closely related to from its beginnings, to a fellow named Dee and those of the Jewish revolutionary spirit.

The one percent left of my religion teaches me that I must be careful when I accuse those of the Jewish revolutionary spirit so as not commit a mortal sin for which I could go to Hell.

Here is the true teachings I must try to abide by in my ramblings…

“http://www.catholicintl.com/articles/The%20Revolutionary%20Jew%20Review.pdf
This Dr. Sungenis’ review of Jones’ book “Jewish RevolutionarySpirit”

Yet Jones is careful to remind us of the boundaries of this discussion: “Does that mean that
every Jew is a bad person? No, it does not. Jewish leadership controls the ‘Synagogue of Satan,’
which in turn controls the ethnic group into which Jews are born. No one has control over the
circumstances of his birth. That is why anti-Semitism, if by that term we mean hatred of the Jews
because of immutable and ineradicable racial characteristics, is wrong. Over the course of their
lives, Jews come to understand that theirs is an ethnic group unlike any other. In spite of the
propaganda of racial superiority which the Talmud seeks to inculcate in them, many Jews come to
understand that a peculiarly malignant spirit has taken up its home at the heart of their ethnos.

, Jones cites the

long-standing directive from Pope Gregory the Great
in the sixth century, otherwise known as the

Sicut Iudeis non,

which states quite simply:

“no one has
the right to harm Jews or disrupt their worship services, but the Jews have, likewise, no right to
corrupt the faith or morals of Christians or subvert Christian societies.”

My friend Barry Lyndon was a former member of the cult for nearly two decades and he managed to escape that damn Sect barely alive! Having said that there are many beautiful and great simple American folks who are Mormons!

#3–There are many ways they can neutralize President Obama, besides character assassination, they can always play the assassination card like in the early 60’s or they can attempt the Supreme Court gambit as in 2000.
Remember Paul Wellstone?

As a native I can tell you mor mons are considered a cult. There understanding and belief system is anti government. Their beliefs are similiar to scientology. Natives reject any connection with Israel or Hebrews…we arent the lost tribe of any race or culture on earth. We are the truth seekers, we are the representatives of mother earth and father sun. Romney is a sexist and a racist.

They consider themselves cousins….they have similaries.
Mormons believe they are decended from ancient Israel.
Both religions exclude outsiders.
Mormons and Jews both believe in a lineage….one by faith and the other by blood.
Mormons do not proselytize in Israel…there was a signed agreement they wouldn’t.
Both want to have a unity or One World Order.
In Mormonisn you will never sing a song with the word ‘sin’ or ‘blood’ in it.(In fact, I don’t think you will find that in any christian bookstore today.)

Acts 17:26 says we are all of one blood. There are no one today special chosen race of religion.

There’s more but it’s just not worth spending time on. They both were made for each other.

To be a Mormon is to believe some crazy stuff. Joseph Smith founder of the Mormon Church said Jesus Christ told him that every other creed on earth is an abomination in His sight. Some tenets of Mormonism: God lives on a planet near the star of Kolob. God is a physical man with flesh and bones probably about 6 ft tall had sexual relations with a girl called Mary. Dark skin is a curse but if you are sufficiently righteous a dark skin person can become light skin. According to the book of Mormon Jesus came to the America’s to preach to the native Americans. Garden of Eden was in Missouri, the new Jerusalem will be there too. Mormons baptize dead people. Magic underwear can protect you and you need a secret password to get into heaven.

“So the jews created mormonism too…. just like wahhabism (among others).”

Love, Saudism is not “Wahhabism”, but CIA-ISM and even ZIONISM! This term “Wahhabism” was popularised by the Soviets by calling the Chechen Freedom Fighters “Wahhabis”. Serbs borrowed that term as well. The French were then using the term “INTÉGRISTES”, meaning FUNDAMENTALISTS! The US was using the term “TERRORISTS”. When it did not achieve much of a resultresult, they used the terms “RADICALS, ISLAMO-FASCIST”! The labels keep changing depending on the politics of the day.

I would like somebody to define “Wahhabism” for me and show how it fits the religion of the Saudi Western puppets who came from a Jewish family in Basra, Mesopotamia (Iraq)!

The first basic principle is agency. The central issue in the premortal council was: Shall the children of God have untrammeled agency to choose the course they should follow, whether good or evil, or shall they be coerced and forced to be obedient? Christ and all who followed him stood for the former proposition—freedom of choice; Satan stood for the latter—coercion and force. The war that began in heaven over this issue is not yet over. The conflict continues on the battlefield of mortality. And one of Lucifer’s primary strategies has been to restrict our agency through the power of earthly governments.

Look back in retrospect on almost six thousand years of human history! Freedom’s moments have been infrequent and exceptional. We must appreciate that we live in one of history’s most exceptional moments—in a nation and a time of unprecedented freedom. Freedom as we know it has been experienced by perhaps less than one percent of the human family.
The Proper Role of Government

The second basic principle concerns the function and proper role of government. These are the principles that, in my opinion, proclaim the proper role of government in the domestic affairs of the nation. [I] believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them. . . .

[I] believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life. . . .

[I] believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments. [D&C 134:1–2, 5] In other words, the most important single function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individual citizens.

The Source of Human Rights

The third important principle pertains to the source of basic human rights. Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government. I, for one, shall never accept that premise. We must ever keep in mind the inspired words of Thomas Jefferson, as found in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

“Utah’s Republican senator, Orrin Hatch, wears a mezuzah around his neck and once told the New York Times he often feels “sorry” he wasn’t born a Jew. “Mormons believe the Jewish people are the chosen people, just like the Old Testament says,” he said. “Anything I can do for the Jewish people, I will do.”

I am a Mormon convert. Mormons do identify themselves as Israelites. But, any Mormon who says they are a friend of the Jew can speak for himself. And the very moment the LDS church makes an official pronouncement that it supports the Jewish people, I am walking away from the LDS church and never looking back. Joseph Smith said that no other book than the book of Mormon will draw a man nearer to God; I say that no group of people will draw you nearest to satan than the people who call themselves Jews today. That can and should be a litmus test for any church, because it is based upon what I call the fruit test. The Jews bear bad fruit, fruit so rotten it poisons all of humanity and stains the soul. Anyone who says God approves of the Jews has no genuine divine inspiration: demonic inspiration perhaps, satanic inspiration perhaps, but not divine. God, who sees all, and knows all, knows what the Jew does. God knows that the Jews do not obey his commandments, but instead follow the blasphemous Talmud. God sees these nasty creatures calling themselves Jews infiltrating Christian churches, creating division, teaching inequity and lawlessness, preaching heresies. The Jew started by infiltrating the Catholic church, subverting it, and being the driving force behind the Reformation: among others, Calvin, was a crypto Jew; Luther, for all his ostensible anti-Jewishness, worked against the only church which kept the Jew in check. All of so-called Judeo-Christianity is a philo-semitic, Judaized vassal, on which I spit. It is the church, or synagogue if you will, of satan.

I, a Mormon, realize Ashkenazi Jews are Khazarian Turks, not Israelites, and Sephardic Jews are Berbers and Arabs, most likely the descendants of Edom via the conquest and forced conversion of Edom under the Hasmonean dynasty. Fake Israelites. Counterfeit Israel. Revelation 2:9; 3:9. I would not be surprised to find out in the afterlife that the Jews are literally the biological children of satan. Their undying commitment to evil has few other explanations.

Again, the moment the Jew poisons the LDS church, as it has poisoned the rest of Christendom, I am walking. I cannot help it if other LDS members are deceived by the Jews, not knowing their works. But they are members, not the church itself.

The LDS church today has been led out of the way until the Lord cleanses it. Joseph Smith said that he was an Ephraimite. He had blue eyes and fair complexion. Patriarchs are an office in the church that gives a special blessing to members– and this blessing includes what tribe of Israel the member is– usually Ephraim, but some of all the tribes. Mormonism thus basically claims to be a gathering of Israel, mainly of the tribe of Ephraim. Early Mormons were almost all Whites, and claimed to be Ephraimites. So you see that Original Mormonism was the first Christian Identity religion. The true Mormon prophets today have been cast out, and those seeking the glory of the world are exalted as prophets seers and revelators– but there is no evidence of them having such gifts. The true Mormon revelations for our day can be found and read here: http://www.2bc.info These revelations show that the Jews of today are mostly false Jews. These revelations also reveal the racial signs that identify true Israel and further signs that identify the tribes. How can Israel be gathered in the last days if it is not identified? http://www.2bc.info/pdf/2BC%20Identity%20of%20Israel.pdf

I’m in complete agreement with “What??”. The moment the LDS church supports openly the talmudic cult which calls itself “judaism” I will need no more proof that the Church has been completely infiltrated, and its leaders at least completely deceived by the devil. The sad thing is, with the monstrous lobbies and media machines the talmudists run in the USA many mormon leaders believe their propaganda, particularly that of talmudists as being “eternal victims”.
The religion of the judeans ended with the destruction of the temple, around 70 AD. What now people call “judaism” is “rabbinical judaism”, a religion invented by jews in Babylon, the one the Pharisees followed.